May's Brexit law passes first hurdle

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to members of the Charity Commission for England and Wales at The Royal Society in London. (Dan Kitwood/Pool via AP)

London - Theresa May’s plan for taking Britain out of the European Union passed
its first parliamentary hurdle as pressure mounted on her main political
rival, Labour leader
Jeremy Corbyn, to clarify his stance on single market membership.

In a vote after midnight, lawmakers backed the prime minister’s
repeal bill after her government promised to discuss critics’ concerns
before they have to vote again. Labour has already proposed a first set
of amendments. The focus now turns to Corbyn, who is due to address the
Trades Union Congress in Brighton on Tuesday after sowing confusion over
his position on Brexit.

The Brexit bill will
formally end Britain’s EU membership and overturn the supremacy of
European law in the country. It is controversial because it hands
sweeping powers to ministers to change legislation as they see fit,
without full scrutiny in Parliament.

Having lost her majority in the House of Commons in June’s
election, May is vulnerable to rebellions from her own side and relies
on the votes of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. Helpfully
for her, seven Labour lawmakers disobeyed
Corbyn’s orders to vote against the bill, while another 17 abstained.

That puts Corbyn in the spotlight a day after hinting he may be open
to trying to keep Britain inside the EU’s single market after Brexit, in
an apparent shift in Labour’s ever-evolving position.

“There has to be a trade relationship with Europe, whether that’s
formally in the single market or whether that’s an agreement to trade
within the single market,” Corbyn told the BBC on Monday. “That’s open
to discussion or negotiation.”

Henry VIII powers

He has spent most of his political career opposed to British
membership of the EU, but was persuaded to campaign against Brexit in
2016 and has come under pressure from members of his own party and the
trade unions, who wield great power over Labour.

In the meantime, May is inviting greater scrutiny over her own Brexit
plans. The government is arguing it needs broad powers because hundreds
of British laws will need to be corrected to remove references to the
EU after Brexit.

But a succession of Conservative lawmakers joined the
opposition to warn that these Henry VIII clauses - named after the 16th
century Tudor king - need to be watered down at a later stage.

Within hours of the vote, Labour submitted a raft of amendments
seeking to curtail the powers, return responsibilities to the devolved
administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and protect
workers’ rights, environmental safeguards and equality laws.

The party also wants the terms and duration of any post-Brexit
transition period to be decided by Parliament, rather than ministers.

“This is such a flawed bill that the prime minister should have
dropped it and started again,” Labour’s Brexit spokesperson,
Keir Starmer, said in a statement.

The bill “will need extensive
amendment and improvement in a whole range of areas. This is likely to
cause delays and division in Parliament, and the prime minister has
nobody to blame but herself.”